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Got it, suppose being remote desktop servers there's probably not a need to go for belts and braces HPs, since at less cost you could build a redundant RD farm anyway.
On a complete tangent, just read your blog on VDI and HP's Flash write back cache
http://www.serversexpress.com/hp-534562b21.html
Is it good performance boost for Hyper-V stuff too? So the module replaces the 256mb card in the server, without the need for the battery module unit?
Yep not that I wouldn't use propper HP kit if I had the money :) at £1,400 for the farm of 4 though its a easy call!
Using cache always depends on the work load if its a lot of random read/write then you should almost always see a boost but if its easy sequential stuff then you wouldn't see as much of a boost.
The flash kit uses super capaciators to keep things powered more details here on page 10 - http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/su.../c00687518.pdf
I probably wouldn't choose HP SSDs though... :)Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesfed
Benchmarking a $11,699 HP Enterprise Performance SSD
^ Cache on the RAID controller definitely helps.
No way! for $11,699 I would be expecting one of the Fusion-IO cards - those things FLY.
Anywhos all off topic back to the SAN :)
Shiney new MSA P2000 G3 sitting in my office, lovely and heavy bit of kit. Now to order the rest for summer hols. Will keep you posted!
Ok i thought I may as well keep this thread going with thoughts and ideas plus reasoning, maybe not be always the right choice, but hopefully someone can read and chip in with suggestions or share experiences.
Well with the summer looming and the fact that I was not CCed in the email about purchasing deadlines(which was last week!) i had to speed up my purchase somewhat!
HP by the way have extended their 50 percent cashback on the MSA P3000 SANs and free second processors for selected DL G7 and G8 until July 31st (you need to buy double the memory to qualify-but vs free Xeon you are still quids in) ..you can have up to 5 servers on one PO, which is pretty good if you start with your 3 host and SAN purchase.
So considered virtualising fileservers onto the SAN but eyeing the future with Hyper-V r3 with SMB replication(and the fact that budget,if not used will be spent on a Statue outside school!) will go for 2 x DL380 G7 with 2 x 146gb for OS and 6 x 1Tb for storage (mmm Raid 5 or 50?) thinking outside the box (or my backside) i may run Hyper-V on these 2 HPs with VM fileservers. Also use Veeam to replicate important VMs from the SAN to have standby for now.
Well been busy at school so thinking up this stuff while sorting out movie maker and resetting students passwords, so sadly my SAN is still sitting in it's box.
Thinking about performance and load on the VMs and Hosts today, with 3 hosts (each with 2 x Xeon 5620,72Gb RAM)
Some have been running 10 - 12 VMs on something similar to this spec, how do you assign virtual cores in conjunction with machines, at present I would normally not over assign virtual cores vs actual cores on the host.
Disk performance is usually the performance limiter...
I was told that a single physical core is usually good for 6-8 virtual cpus. But obviously what you're making those virtual cpus do all day will also determine how you dish it out.
The majority of our virtual servers are at least 2 core and we're running around 10 per host.
Indeed. I will be having 12 x 600gb 10k SAS, will draw up a little plan later on tonight to curve up the RAID.
So choice is :
Have all 12 Raided over lots of Spindles, but risk one application swamping the IOPS(however our total servers at present has extremely kow IOPS after running perfmon.)
Have the 12 HDDs divided into seperate RAIDS according to SQL / Exchange etc..but risk of over complication.
I also have at least 6 300gb 10k SAS I could shove in the P2000 as well.
@MrWu Many spindles make light work, I'd chuck the whole lot in a RAID6 pool possibly with a hot spare. Divide it up using LUNs and partitions as this will allow the storage to be more quickly reconfigured/divided up and also allow for better utilisation of the available resources. I don't see the spindles all being busy thanks to one app. I'd look at chucking the smaller drives into another array of RAID6 which you can use if required for more storage and even to split the load in the unlikely event that your usage can saturate a 12 spindle SAS set.
Cheers Synack,
Would you attempt RAID 50 for a bit more performance or would RAID 6 be a more fault tolerant setup ?
I won't be able to buy another SAN for replication but thinking about using Veeam to replicate VMs on seperate physical file servers running Hyper-v or another dedicated dl180 server with a Phyiscal DC(cobbled from older servers) on another site replicating via Veeam, so if server room or SAN goes, we can spool those up.:-)
You loose a huge amount of space from 5+0 and the speed difference is not that large. I'd go with 6 personally. Depending on the SAN you may be able to snapshot whole LUNs in the SAN itself then backup from those.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrWu
We have 2 twin Shelf P4500's , it's a dam good job they are twin shelf as they have a software bug that causes them to reboot occasionally. One went down last week and caused one of our Citrix XenServer hosts to fall over. Fortunatly HA had already moved the VM's to the other XS's... Not very impressive though from HP. The update will be applied when we have a suitable clear window.
Our old Dell/EMC Clarrion still chuggs on happily after nearly five years but it's hardly stressed now.
Rob
Mind all over the place tonight.
Now working out the Power Consumption for UPS sizing etc.
The HP Power Advisor Tool HP Power Advisor great little utility to work out your VA rating for your servers with options, which will help you opt for the right PSU from HP as well, I was suprised how much power a 10Gbe card takes. (but the only snag with the Power Advisory Tool is that it doesn't give power rating for the MSA P2000 SANS) surprised how low actual VA ratings are required, I did calculate at 100 percent utilisation so over compensating somewhat..looks like 8kva will cover a stack load of servers and switches (15 servers, firewall, switches and routers - mmm might get back to that in the morning when my mind is clear) really liking what Borri offers but due to red tape getting an account opened with them through our finance department(long story) I might not be able to book an install for summer. :-( so could well have to go back to APC.
Have you benchmarked this yourself? In my systems RAID50 batters raid 6 for read and especially write speed. It's also more reliable generally.Quote:
Originally Posted by SYNACK
There is no place for Raid 5 based on it's awful scalability and poor write performance.